In this article we'll be examining a practice involving Search Engine Optimization that while beneficial if done the correct way can be extremely damaging if done the cheap and "easy" way. Although I hesitate to use the word Cheap because there's nothing inexpensive about getting your site penalized by Google Caffeine or any of the major Search Engines. A penalty that can include a negative drop in ranking or in extreme cases even being banned. I also hesitate to assign the word SEO because in many cases, and this doesn't include the reputable sites or organic methods, some link building methods should not be equated with SEO. Because quite often, the only one who benefits is the person who collects your money.
So with this in mind lets look at tips for identifying the methods that can damage your site’s reputation and effective organic techniques that help build legitimate high quality back links resulting in a positive impact.
Paid Link Building Methods- The bad and ugly!
Tip: If the company (quite often one or two people) don’t have a direct and serviceable phone number for contact purposes it’s best to avoid them. Although not always a perfect indicator transparent SEO companies and agencies will either answer their phone or return your call.
So with this in mind lets look at tips for identifying the methods that can damage your site’s reputation and effective organic techniques that help build legitimate high quality back links resulting in a positive impact.
Paid Link Building Methods- The bad and ugly!
Tip: If the company (quite often one or two people) don’t have a direct and serviceable phone number for contact purposes it’s best to avoid them. Although not always a perfect indicator transparent SEO companies and agencies will either answer their phone or return your call.
Tip: Visit their website, providing they even have one. Quite often clients ask me to investigate and the first stop is always the proposed link builders website. If the site appears outdated, vague, only provides a contact form, contains numerous misspellings or grammatical errors and quite possibly has no history, chances are you're not dealing with who you thought you were. A site with history will contain search results numbering in the thousands. A link building source that has no links or history either doesn’t practice what they peddle (and there’s a good reason) or may have changed their name so there's no identifiable trail.
Tip: Refer to the Google Webmaster guidelines on link building. Perhaps this should have been the first tip but anyone who takes the time to read it, really study it, might not read my other tips. And while that might be fine, the above tips apply for those gray areas where you might have concerns you can’t put your finger on.
Here's Google’s explanation of what constitutes a Link Scheme:
Notice the "reapply" at the bottom. Not convincing? Here's what Google states about paid links:
A quote from the above: “Buying or selling links that pass Page Rank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.” Google then goes on to explain what it considers to be acceptable ’paid links’ which leads to:
Organic Link Building and Acceptable Paid Links: The good!
Tip: Unique, relevant and resourceful content is the best way to gain inbound links. Being an authority in your chosen field is a great way to gain links. An example of authority text is content that educates, offers resources or entertains. I intentionally used the word inbound because inbound links are votes coming from other sites. They are the most coveted relevant links available. And Google Caffeine focuses a lot about quality content and relevancy.
Strategy: Distributing high quality SEO enhanced articles or press releases are a great way to gain inbound links. Some of these links will be picked up by scraper sites but at least the majority of these sites are programmed to be relevant to the field you represent based on keywords. Others may be featured on Blogs, news sites and make the Social Media circuit. These are real keepers.
Strategy: Create an external Blog and link it back to your site. This can add authority and if your Blog is popular people will link to it. Again, the key is relevant, useful and unique content that ideally addresses a specific niche or purpose.
Tip: There are reputable companies that specialize in selling links to help with advertising or even gaining traffic from relevant and screened sources. As much as I'd like to name a few I don’t want to isolate the others. This represents the commerce side of the Internet. But in no way is this to be confused with paying for links solely for the purpose of page rank or other manipulative practices. These companies are transparent and have been in business, under the same name, for several years. You’ll also find that in researching them their clients are generally satisfied and often names you've actually heard of.
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